Nothing Works

Gun control can't stop people bent on mayhem

BY PETER BRONSON

When's the last time you thought of "¢ nothing.

Imagine white space. A quiet place. A blank spot on a
map, where creative muses daydream in cloud hammocks, waiting for an
open mind. It's the home of good ideas, inspiration and peace. It's a
button that turns off the world so we can hear the quiet, still voice of
God.

It's also like Mark Twain's quote: Everybody talks
about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Maybe we're afraid
of it. Someone might see us doing nothing and wonder if we're sick or
lazy. Everyone is supposed to brag about being crazy busy.

Not Always Better

I admit I'm good at nothing. I know a little bit
about it. And I've learned that there are times there is nothing I can
do, when it's the only answer. Yet everyone runs in circles around it,
hurrying to do something "” anything "” just to look important.

I don't think it was always this way. I like to
believe that once upon a time it was OK to admit nothing would work. It
was OK to confess that we knew nothing and nothing could be done.

Maybe it's the unceasing yammering media, insisting
on urgent solutions and emergency opinions, riding off in the wrong
direction in a dust cloud of panic, hell-bent to demand answers that are
hopelessly wrong.

And they are always the same: "There oughta be a law "¢" So we get another new law and lose one more acre of liberty.

What if we just stop, take a deep breath and vote for "None of the above?"

What if the next time a celebrity or politician
spouts head-slapping idiocy, we politely look the other way as we should
for any social embarrassment?

What if instead of throwing a trillion dollars away
on bailouts, stimulus, bank rescues and billion-dollar crutches for
crippled corporations, we just do nothing? Would we be worse off?

What if we did nothing to our tax laws for 10 or 20
years? What if we looked at healthcare, banking, so-called climate
change and all the other federal regulations that could wallpaper
Nebraska and said to Congress: "Stop. We have plenty of rules. Unless
you have a regulation to erase regulations, go away and do nothing."

Privacy, Sympathy, Prayers

One of my favorite jazz artists, Pat Metheny, knows
the power of nothing. On discs such as Way Up, he builds a traffic jam
of sound then suddenly breaks into "¢ silence. Then, quietly, slowly, he
starts from nothing and returns with soft notes that paint elegant
beauty, the sound of floating serenity.

Deep down, we all yearn for that.

So, now that the shouting has stopped, what if the
next time some crazy-evil nut-job shoots helpless people, we do "¢
nothing. No political posturing. No harsh close-ups of distraught,
grieving families. No talking heads prattling ignorance before the
bodies cool. What if we just quietly mourn and give the families
privacy, dignity, sympathy and prayers.

I know, that's ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as
the political vandalism perpetrated so that self-important fools with
histrionic good intentions can "do something" that won't change
anything.

Let's face it: There's a tragic price for the
freedom we love, and we'd rather pay it than censor those Tarantino
violence-porn movies, ban blood-spattered video games or detain
dangerously insane people who wander the streets. The media won't even
confess their own guilt in making celebrities of shooters who commit
horrific crimes for media attention.

Instead, they take aim at guns like a fat man blaming his fork.

No Defense

Gun control can't stop mass murder. Yet politicians
raise the cry, and the media choir sings along with threats to ban guns
and ammo. The result: Wal-Mart sells out of guns and gun shows are
mobbed.

Anyone who is not blinded by ideological glaucoma can see it's not working.

Studies show that "gun free" zones are killing
zones. But one armed citizen can stop a mass killer. As concealed-carry
laws and gun ownership increase, gun crimes decline. It's common sense.
People who can defend themselves usually do. Criminals may be stupid,
but not suicidal. They prefer unarmed victims.

As Wormwood would write to Screwtape: "Our biggest
asset is the gun control crowd. Their misguided efforts put more guns on
the streets and make sure victims are unarmed and defenseless."

Spelling Out the Facts

One day a local police officer came to the
newspaper where I worked to patiently explain firearms to reporters and
editors. Few attended. The certainty of ignorance is a powerful drug.

He patiently explained that an "assault" weapon only
looks like a military rifle, the way a spoiler makes a family sedan
look like a race car. But no matter how fierce it looks, it's still a
semiautomatic (not automatic), just a common Toyota Camry of firearms.
It all comes down to who's behind the wheel.

Full automatics have been regulated since Hoover's
dam was a leaky faucet. Yet the media stubbornly, deliberately pretend
that scary-looking guns are more powerful and more deadly. They are not.

A revolver can fire about as fast as a
semi-automatic and is less likely to jam. A pump shotgun can be far more
deadly. The cop explained all this and more. And the next time there
was a sensational gun story, the same old "assault weapons" hysteria was
back, harder to cure than mental malaria.

We also are told that guns are easy to get. Not
true. I tried to buy a shotgun this year at a gun show. The FBI blocked
my purchase, offering no reason. It happens a lot. Three days later, I
was cleared "”after filling out multiple pages of registration. But all
the paperwork, background checks and regulations can't stop the next
deranged shooter.

Admit Evil Exists

I guess some people would rather pass more laws than admit that evil exists and sometimes there is nothing we can do.

The same week those kids were killed in Newtown,
Conn., there was a similar story from China: A lunatic stabbed 23 school
kids. All the gun control laws in China couldn't stop him. Maybe they
will ban knives and clubs.

Long, Sad History

When I was editor of a weekly newspaper in Bath,
Mich., one of the first things I did was look up the story that put Bath
on the map in 1927. A school board member who had lost an election
planted dynamite at a country schoolhouse and blew up 38 children and
seven adults, then detonated his truck packed with nails and shrapnel
and killed himself.

Maybe there was a crusade for "dynamite control"
after that. But it didn't stop Timothy McVeigh from using fertilizer to
kill hundreds; it didn't stop the 9/11 terrorists who used jets to kill
thousands.

Trying to battle evil with lies and ignorance is as stupid as trying to protect people by disarming them.